by R. M. Olson
She raised one shoulder in a shrug, trying to ignore the way the question had wormed its way into her brain.
It couldn’t mean anything. As far as the rest of the system was concerned, Jez Solokov had been dead for the last three weeks.
But for some reason, she couldn’t shake the cold feeling in her stomach.
He shook his head and knelt to pull out the chips. “What are we gambling for this time?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Where you get that cat piss last night?”
He looked at her warily. “I have a stash of it. Outside the cell somewhere.”
“Want to play for a bottle? I’ll stake the rest of the lunches you lost. One win and you get everything back.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Fine then,” he said after a moment. “But we’re playing a game you can’t cheat at. Fool’s tokens.” He pulled out a small cloth bag and shook the tokens into his hand, a slightly smug look on his face. “You still want to gamble, now that you have to play by the rules?”
She raised an eyebrow, trying not to grin. “Guess I’d be a poor gambler if I didn’t take my chances.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TAE, SECTOR 2, Day 4
Tae held his breath as the lock on his cell door clicked quietly, but there was no whistle, no sound of blaring alarms.
Slowly, carefully, he cracked the cell door open.
It felt strange, opening the door under his own power and stepping out into the silent halls, lit by the flickering light of a single orange light-bar strung down the middle of the corridor.
He slipped out the door and glanced around quickly.
He had maybe five standard minutes between patrols.
He’d been watching every time the guards led them down the hallway, figuring out which juncture led where. And then, of course, Lev had sent him a map for the entire thing, based off some esoteric thing he’d read somewhere and his two days worth of observations. And, of course, it was flawless.
He had to admit, it did make his life significantly easier. Still … he was so used to being the one everyone relied on that it felt strange and slightly uncomfortable to rely on someone else’s work.
If he’d just done the smart thing two days ago, he’d already have the scans, and be working on getting in.
There were vis-cams set into the walls at regular intervals, but they were just far apart enough that there was a blind spot if you kept directly under them and kept low.
It took an agonizingly long time to reach the stairwell, and he could already hear the guard’s footfalls echoing down the empty corridor. He glanced around again quickly and held the lock pick on his com against the stairwell door. When he heard the click of the door unlocking, he breathed a sigh of relief, pushed it open a crack, and slipped through, locking it behind him.
Down one more corridor, and then through the doors to the empty prison library. He held his breath, but the lock-pick clicked and the door swung open. He glanced around, then crouched down in the corner, slipping a small scanner chip into his com.
He moved his wrist quickly along the broken section of the wall, and breathed a small sigh of relief at the faint green glow from the com.
He’d guessed right. It was scanning.
When he got far enough, he sank down against the wall and pulled up the holoscreen.
A map of the wiring rapidly populated the blank screen. He frowned and shook the scanner quickly, hitting the reset button. He watched it closely as it repopulated, something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach.
There must be a mistake somewhere. He must have messed up.
The sharp click of boots sounded in the hallway outside, and he clamped a hand over the com and swore quietly.
The guard. He hadn’t been paying attention.
Silently, he slid down against the wall, hoping the pulled-out bench would hide him from view. His palms were sweating, and his heart pounded so loudly that he wasn’t sure if he’d hear the guard shout if he did see him.
The boots came closer. He swallowed hard and held his breath.
They stopped just across from him. And then, finally, they turned and started down another aisle.
He let out his breath slowly, his head pounding.
When the guard’s footsteps at last passed through the doorway and receded down the hall, Tae scrambled to his feet and reset the scanner chip.
It had to be a scanner malfunction. Please, let it be a scanner malfunction.
He passed it over the broken wall again, his stomach a tight knot, a headache pounding behind his eyes. Then he crouched in the shadows and tapped his holoscreen.
He watched, barely breathing, as the information repopulated.
For a long moment he stared at nothing. Then, gently, he placed his hand over his com, and the holoscreen disappeared.
Masha was going to be furious.
When they’d put the wiring in, however long ago, instead of wiring the systems separately, they’d combined them—the prisoner security, the weapons security, the cells security. He’d have to hack through all of them before he could even get on the system.
It was impossible.
And he’d have to do it anyways. Like he always did, because, like always, everyone was counting on him to get this right. And if he failed, if he messed up or miscalculated, everyone would die.
Slowly, he stood. He made his way out the door and down the stairwell, closing the door gently behind him and listening for the lock to click before he moved on.
He was half-way back to his cell when a soft “Pst!” came from the shadows of a cell to his right. He jumped and spun around, hand going to a non-existent weapon.
“It’s alright, I won’t kill you,” said a soft voice. The voice itself was unfamiliar, but the accent was impossible to miss. He peered closer, breath coming quickly.
It was a slender woman, her face indistinct in the flickering orange light.
He could just make out three cots inside the cell, two of them child-sized.
“Tanya?” he whispered through the knot in his throat.
It was impossible.
“Shhh. The children are sleeping.”
“What—” he didn’t know what to say, and his exhausted brain wasn’t being any help, so at last he gave up, shaking his head.
“I’ve been watching you. You and the woman are friends with that crazy girl, aren’t you?”
He didn’t need to ask who she meant.
“Why are you hiding from us?” he asked at last. “We’ve been asking about you for days.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “But I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are or what you want. She told me that Ysbel is still alive—I don’t believe it. And I need to protect my children, because there is no one else who will.”
“So why are you talking to me?” he asked. She paused a moment.
“Because—because on the chance that you did know Ysbel, once, I thought I should warn you. This is not a prison you escape from.”
His heart was pounding strangely. “Tanya. Listen to me. Ysbel is here, she’s just in the other sector. I can take you to her.”
The woman looked at him for a long time. At last she said, “Very well. And if I say I will come?”
“I—” he glanced at his com. It was already morning, and the whistle would blow in the next thirty standard minutes. “I’m not sure I can set everything up by tonight. But tomorrow night. I’ll come to your cell.”
She was still watching him. At last she said, “You still intend to try escape, don’t you? Believe me, it’s been tried. And what happens when they catch you is much worse than death.”
“Wha—”
“Do you know about sedation?” she asked quietly.
He felt the blood drain from his face. “They don’t still do that, do they?”
“Here? Yes, they do. And with the same old-fashioned tech.”
He stared at her, mind spinning.
Of course he’d heard about sedatio
n. It had been all the rage thirty years back, new technology, a way to put people into a painless sleep until a way could be found to deal with them.
Except, it hadn’t worked. Except, the people who’d been put into sedation slowly lost their minds. Maybe for the first week after they woke up were alright. Maybe even the first few months. But then the side-effects came into play. It started with their vision—they’d see things that weren’t there, terrifying things, that they couldn’t escape from even with their eyes closed. Then the ringing in their ears, then the loss of feeling in hands and feet. They didn’t die, not right away. They lived years, sometimes. But after the loss of feeling came the pain, phantom pain that it was impossible to treat and impossible to cure. They lived screaming and sobbing until the pain had driven them raving mad. And when they died, they died still screaming.
“That’s what they’ll do if they catch you,” she whispered. “They’ll say that it was approved by the government to deal with dangerous prisoners. Maybe it was, I don’t know. But if they put you into sedation, you’d best pray to the Lady or whoever you pray to that they never wake you up again.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LEV, SECTOR 1, Day 5
“Tae? Are you on?” Lev whispered into his com once the guards had left from lights out. The prior morning, just before the whistle blew for inspection, he’d gotten a terse message from Tae in pilot’s code, but all it said was, ‘I have news. Talk tonight.’
It hadn’t been a good start to his day. And to be honest, it hadn’t been a good day to begin with. The gang situation he’d started had devolved, and he’d spent most of the day trying to avoid getting killed by one side or the other. It was more on the lines of a cold war now, but it wouldn’t take much to push it into a full-blown riot. At this point, they needed to get out before there wasn’t somewhere to get out of.
Tae’s voice was so exhausted it made Lev tired just to hear it. “It’s—not good news. I got the scan, but we have some problems.”
Lev stared at the com, biting back the sickness in the back of his throat.
“What can you tell me?”
“I—can’t hack into the prisoner logs. It was supposed to be simple. But they have the systems hooked up together, and I can’t get into one without getting into all of them, and the weapons system is ancient. I’ve been looking every spare moment. I can’t see a single thing I recognize.” His voice was sharp with despair.
“It’s alright, Tae,” Lev said at last, trying to sound less hopeless than he felt. “We’ll figure it out. It’ll be fine.”
“What are you talking about?” Ysbel asked.
He rubbed a hand over his face. “Ysbel. I—”
“You’re getting ready to leave without Tanya. Without my babies,” she said quietly.
Lev sighed, his shoulders dropping. “Ysbel—”
“I understand,” she said. “But I need you to understand something as well. I am not leaving.”
“Ysbel, listen to me.”
“No. You listen to me. I know you are all here for me. I told you, back on the ship, that I would not ask you to stay longer than a week. But I’m not leaving Tanya and my children. Not again.”
“Ysbel. That patch Tae put on. It’s not going to last.”
She shrugged. “Then perhaps I die. But perhaps I don’t. And even if I do, maybe it lasts long enough for me to see them one more time.”
“Wait.” It was Tae. “I have other news.” He paused. “I—saw Tanya. On the way back. She—agreed to come with me, to meet you.”
“What?” Ysbel’s voice was suddenly hoarse. “You—but I’m in the wrong sector.”
“There’s a window in the library. The guards use it,” he said. “I sent the lock pick I made through to your coms, so we should all be able to open the internal doors.” He paused a moment. “Ysbel. I don’t know if we can get her and the children out with us. But I’ll try.”
Lev cut a quick glance at Ysbel. Her eyes were closed, her face cut with pain, and she was leaning heavily against the wall.
“When can I see her?” she whispered.
“Tomorrow night. That’s the soonest I could make it work. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to get us through,” Tae said. Frustration bled through his tone. “I can’t seem to get in. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I even hacked into the Ungovernable to see if I could use her systems and work backwards. Nothing is working. I’ve never had this hard of a time hacking into anything.”
“It’s old tech, Tae,” Lev said, trying to keep the heaviness from his voice. “It’s not your fault. We’ll make this work.”
“Wait. Is Jez on?” asked Masha suddenly. “The guards told me they’d put her back in solitary.”
Lev froze.
“Jez?” he said into the com. He tapped into her direct channel and tried again. “Jez?”
For a moment there was silence.
She hated being locked up. She couldn’t stand being locked up. And there was a guard who was hunting her, who, according to Tae, would actually kill her if he caught her.
He found his hands were trembling. “Jez?”
“Hey genius-boy.”
He closed his eyes, body sagging in relief. “Jez, what were you—”
“Jez.” Masha’s voice had ice cracking from it. “Were you even listening?”
“Nope,” the pilot said in a self-satisfied voice. “I found some alcohol, and I plan to get drunk, so don’t mind me.”
There was a moment of disbelieving silence.
Lev dropped his head in his hands.
Leave it to Jez.
“Jez—” he started.
“Leave her,” Masha snapped. “She clearly has better things to do. As do the rest of us.” She paused a moment. “Tomorrow then, Tae?”
“Tomorrow,” said Tae dully.
The com line clicked off.
He sat with his head in his hands as Ysbel dropped onto the cot below him. She didn’t speak, and he didn’t push her.
Damn that stupid, irresponsible pilot.
He tried to lie down, but he couldn’t seem to close his eyes.
“Jez?” he whispered at last into his com. There was no answer.
He sighed, and sat up reluctantly.
This was stupid. He knew it was stupid.
How had he become someone who did stupid things on a regular basis?
He glanced at his com, and a few minute later he slid quietly from his cot. If his calculations were correct, he should have about ten standard minutes to get down the corridor before the next patrol came.
“Ysbel. I’ll be back,” he whispered.
He cautiously slipped from his cell and, ducking quickly between the shadows cast by the intermittent lights, slipped down the corridors to Jez’s cell block.
This was stupid. In fact, this was ridiculous.
Still—
He pressed his com up against the lock to her cell, and the door clicked and swung open. He slipped inside.
He didn’t know what he expected to see—Jez laying on her cot drinking straight out of the bottle, maybe, joking and singing drunkenly.
Instead she was huddled in the corner, her knees to her chest and her face buried in her knees. She didn’t even look up when he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“Jez?” he asked cautiously.
At last she turned, and he was shocked at her face. It was gaunt and tear-streaked, and her eyes were red-rimmed from crying.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked dully.
“Jez.” He tried to keep his frustration in check. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you think is wrong?” Her voice was thick from crying.
“Jez.” He knelt beside her. “Look at me. You’ve got to stop this.”
“Stop what?”
He sighed in exasperation. “Mouthing off to Masha. Mouthing off to the guards. Getting into trouble. Getting drunk, for the Lady’s sake.”
“I haven’t
even drunk anything yet,” she grumbled. “But I’m planning on it.” She pulled out a bottle of something and put it to her lips, tipping her head back.
“Jez!” he snapped. “Cut that out. Give it to me.”
She lowered the bottle and glared at him, but at last, grudgingly, she handed it over.
He sniffed it, then waved his hand in front of his face, coughing. “Where did you get this? It smells like cat piss.”
“Tastes like it too,” she muttered, turning back to the corner. She dropped her head down to her knees again, and a moment later her shoulders started to shake.
He sighed, some of his irritation giving way to pity.
“Jez. It’s OK. I told you, we’re going to get out of here. Just give Tae and me another day.”
For a few moments she didn’t react, just slumped there, shoulders shaking, but at last she sniffed loudly and looked up, wiping her face on her sleeve.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered. “I’ve been trying, Lev. But—” She sniffled again and closed her eyes. “I can’t do it. I’m going to try to break out or something, and I’m going to screw everything up, and Ysbel won’t get back with T-T-Tanya—” She broke down into wretched sobs again.
“Jez—”
“You don’t understand,” she sobbed. The panic from the previous days was gone, replaced with a raw hopelessness. “I’ve been locked up before, back on the prison ship. When I got picked up for smuggling. I—I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to go crazy. I wanted to die, because it would have been better than being locked up. That’s why I broke out. Because I figured I might get killed, but at least I wouldn’t be locked up anymore.”
“Jez,” he said firmly, taking her by the shoulders. “You’re going to be alright. I’m right here. I’ve got you. Look, Tae figured out how to unlock the doors, alright? That’s how I got in. You’re not trapped.”
“Sure as hell feel trapped,” she hiccupped.
“Jez—”
She dropped her head again and burst into ragged sobs.
Gingerly, he put his arm around her. The wiry muscles in her shoulders were bunched with tension, and it felt strange, being so close to her when their lives weren’t actively in danger. She leaned into him weakly. He froze, but she didn’t seem to even notice.